Page 48 of Goode to Be Bad
But I had every intention of avoiding as much as I could for as long as I could. Because deep down, despite the bluster and bravado of my personality, I’m a coward. Afraid of being hurt even worse. Of being rejected. Of being used. Of being betrayed. Of putting my heart in someone’s grip and being crushed.
Of baring my secrets, because to put them out there would make them real all over again and I’d spent years forming a nice hard calcareous exoskeleton of emotionless armor to keep the dark agony contained. To bring them up and out, to really deal with them meant breaking open that shell, and once the shell was compromised, my tender, sensitive insides would bared to the vagaries of what life had taught me was a cruel, wicked world.
And if the world was cruel and wicked, it seemed like a good strategy was to be cruel and wicked in the name of self-preservation.
Myles disagreed, clearly, because he kept teasing little nuggets of sweetness and tenderness out of me, damn the conniving asshole.
Like when we spent an afternoon with Zane and Mara—Zane was a former Navy SEAL, and exuded calm, deadly confidence underneath a hard-ass veneer, a demeanor that his wife seemed to have made it her mission to soften. Mara was every bit as tough and capable as Zane, and I discovered she was a former combat medic, which made sense. That afternoon, Myles and Zane decided to head off to the docks to do some shore fishing, leaving me with Mara…and their two kids, one of whom was a little baby girl.
And I, being a twenty-one-year-old single girl prone to sexual misadventure and hard partying, with little to no exposure to young children, had absolutely no clue what to do when Mara plopped the little girl into my lap.
“Here,” Mara said. “Play with her. My boys are way too quiet, which means they’re doing something apocalyptically destructive.”
I gaped, mouth flapping. “Wait, I—I don’t know the first thing about babies!”
Mara laughed. “Don’t drop her, and don’t let her swallow anything. Let her sit on your lap and be slobbery. It’s not as hard as you think.”
And then she was gone, and a few minutes later I heard her bellowing angrily—apparently her assumption had been correct. And there I was with a baby. How old, I couldn’t have said. Old enough to sit up on her own but not walk, old enough to eat mushy food but still need formula. Old enough to gum and slobber and slurp all over my fingers and my necklace and my shirt. She was cute, but…what did I do with her?
“Um.” I held her on my lap, hands around her waist, making sure she didn’t topple over suddenly. “Hi.”
“Ba. Ba-ba-ba.” She whacked me on the cheek, laughing.
“It’s not nice to hit, you know.”
“Dad-da-da.”
“I don’t know where your dad is. I don’t even know for surewhoyour dad is, because I’m relatively certain you’re not Zane and Mara’s.”
“Mama.”
“Mama is upstairs dealing with those two boys, who seem to each have the destructive capacity of a category four hurricane.”
“Ma, ma, ma, ma.” She grabbed my necklace, a choker with a dangly chain and clover pendant, and stuck in her mouth.
“I don’t think you should chew on that, kiddo.” I looked around for something to give her to play with, and spotted a giant plastic key ring with giant plastic keys in bright primary colors. “Here, chew on this, Gummy the Slobber Queen.”
She took it, stared at it intently as if deciding what to do with it. And then promptly began assaulting me with it, cackling hysterically.
“Why you little bitch! Wait––I can’t call a baby a bitch, can I? Not nice, Lexie. Be nice to the baby. If your first word is bitch, I’m going to be in trouble.”
Whack! Whack! The keys smacked me on the nose, shoulder, and eyebrow, each whack accompanied with baby laughter.
Which only grew more hysterical when I pretended to take the keys and then give them back, with a peek-a-boo type rhythm and boo to it. “Give me that! Here you go. No, no, no, give me that!”
And then she scored a direct hit to my eyeball, and that game was over, much to Mara’s amusement—she’d been watching for who knew how long.
“Tate has been trying to stop Lena from hitting for weeks, but it’s her favorite game,” Mara said.
“So she isn’t yours. I wasn’t sure.”
“No, she’s Tate and Corin’s youngest. Tate and Aerie are helping the boys finish mastering the album you guys recorded, so I’m hanging out with Lena.”
“And what did your boys get into?”
“Marco and Isaac are the most conniving, destructive, hyperactive human beings I’ve ever known,” she sighed, and I could tell she meant that with every ounce of love she possessed. “They got into my makeup, found my MAC lipstick, and drew penises all over my vanity mirror. And on each other. And my marble countertop. And my antique claw-foot soaking tub which Zane just installed six months ago.”
I put my hand over my mouth. “You’re kidding.”